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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864679">Have I got news for you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides'>josephides</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:55:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864679</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bran reflected that few women wore anger so well as she did. He wanted to kiss her as much as he wanted to punish her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>371</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Have I got news for you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bran landed at Sea-Tac, furious. As soon as the plane had taken off, he had felt a flare of anxiety through the thin bond that joined him to his mate and encircled his beast. Feeling her, feeling her emotions wasn’t unusual. She was mercurial, swinging from great highs to dismal lows throughout the day. It was one of the many reasons he dampened the bond between them. It wasn’t helpful for old wolves like him to feel so much, all the time. He normally did his very best to forget about her.</p><p>But this flare of anxiety was potent and, followed as it was by guilt, tremendous guilt, and then the all-too familiar sensation of her fear, he knew that Leah had done something he would be angry about. Very angry. Consequentially – and she would have kicked herself if she had known this was a consequence of her projection of emotions – Bran <em>became</em> angry. </p><p>His cell blew up as soon as he turned it on, having patiently waited until he was released from the metal tube that had held him captive whilst something <em>he needed to know </em>about was happening on the ground. Three missed calls from Charles. Two from Anna. One from Samuel. A number he didn’t recognize. About a dozen text messages. Absolutely nothing from Leah. Of course.</p><p>Charles’s name flashed up on his screen whilst he was sorting through the chaos.</p><p>He answered before it had even rung once. “Tell me what she’s done,” Bran snapped.</p><p>Charles sighed. “I’m sending you footage now and I suggest you watch it somewhere quiet. Leah just out-ed herself on national TV.”</p><p>*</p><p>Bran watched the footage. Then he watched it again.</p><p>He gave himself a moment to calm down, then he called Charles back.</p><p>“I’ll have to fly to New York,” Charles said. He could hear his son pacing. “Apparently she’s trapped in her hotel and tearing her hair out. Journalists everywhere.”</p><p>“No. You shouldn’t be seen with her. None of us should,” Bran said caustically. Honestly, if she had been there, in front of him, he would have wrung her neck.</p><p>Leah – the mate of the Marrok - was now an enormous security risk to every werewolf who wasn’t ‘out’. Just by her association, she could draw attention to anyone who wanted to remain private and it was of paramount importance that Bran and his family, his particular pack, kept their anonymity. The information the human authorities had on the hierarchy of his people had to be kept a bare minimum so that Bran could do his job and continue to safeguard his people and by her foolish – and unlikely – exploits, she had just jeopardized everything, <em>everything</em>, that Bran had been trying to protect.</p><p>“To be fair to Leah—“</p><p>“No, no, we are not going to be fair to her,” Bran snapped. He lowered his voice. “She should have left to that child to her fate. She was <em>incredibly</em> stupid. Leave me to think about this.” He hung up. The number of text messages were increasing. He opened one from Mercy – <em>Tell me that was on purpose?!</em> - then deleted it. Another arrived from an unknown number.</p><p>
  <em>Extraction required? DC.</em>
</p><p>He called the number. “I’m assuming your team could get her out discretely,” he said.</p><p>Christiansen thought so. “A wig, a couple of body-doubles for distraction. Shouldn’t be too challenging. It’s fashion week, which only helps us. Plenty of strange looking people about.”</p><p>Fashion Week. Bran felt himself sneer uncontrollably. That his mate had been away from home for something so facile just added to his irritation.</p><p>“A thought,” Christiansen said, “if I may?”</p><p>“You’re welcome to thought. In fact, I encourage it,” Bran said. Would be a significant improvement if all his werewolves applied <em>thinking</em> to their actions.</p><p>“Why don’t I publicly go and get her?”</p><p>Bran thought on it, the idea clearing a new pathway in his brain. Christiansen was his werewolf poster child. He was photogenic and looked like butter wouldn’t melt. But Bran tried to use him sparingly, when he was sure the outcome would be favorable. He tried to decide if this would be favorable. Rescuing a damsel in distress? Perhaps. Linking Leah with Christiansen? It would be a positive association, at least.</p><p>He ran his hand through his hair.  “All right,” he said slowly. “Yes, I think that will work.”</p><p>“I’ll be there tonight. Do you want to let her know?”</p><p>*</p><p>Bran did not play games. He called her cell and started speaking as soon as she answered. “Christiansen will fetch you tonight,” he said, deliberately using language that would annoy her. <em>Fetch? </em>she would say to him. <em>Am I a dog? </em>“Do what he says.”</p><p>Leah’s voice was whisper-quiet and tremulous. “But, Bran, there are hundreds of journalists here. Photographers. Even the hotel staff are taking videos.”</p><p>“Yes, well, what did you expect. It doesn’t matter now. You’re out. Which alias did you use to travel under?”</p><p>“Lea Carmichael,” she said. “Bran, I—“</p><p>He interrupted her, having no interest in what she had to say right now, “Both hotel and flights?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>That was a small measure of comfort. “David will call you when he arrives.” He hung up.  </p><p>Then he went about his business.</p><p>*</p><p>“Good photo,” Angus said, looking at his cell and handing it over to Bran.</p><p>They were having dinner in his house, Angus correctly interpreting that Bran was in no mood for a public gathering whilst he waited for an update on his mate.</p><p>The photo had been screengrabbed from the website of a national tabloid. The headline read “JUST VISITING A FRIEND?”. The photograph of Christiansen escorting Leah from the hotel was a masterpiece. He almost smiled; David had a real gift for creating the right image. Leah was wearing oversized sunglasses and a long, dark coat – too big for her, probably his. It made her look small and vulnerable. Christiansen had his hand on her back and another hand outstretched to the photographers, smiling but firm. <em>Back away</em> his face said. But his smile said <em>please</em>.</p><p>Bran sighed and handed the phone back.</p><p>“Pretty good, no?” Angus said, fiddling with the photograph on the screen.  </p><p>Bran twirled his fork into his pasta and changed the subject.</p><p>*</p><p>He arrived back home just as Anna was leaving, closing his front door behind her. He was surprised to see her – he didn’t share his travel plans widely so she couldn’t have been there to meet him. “I came to see how Leah was doing,” Anna explained, all-but skipping down the path to hug him.</p><p>She was a good girl, Bran thought. She was one of the few creatures on this earth would have embraced him in his current temper. He let her soothe him enough so that he could ask, “And how is she doing?”</p><p>“She’s pretty upset.” Anna tilted her head to her side. “Are you really angry with her?”</p><p>“Leah knows better,” was all Bran was able to say.</p><p>“You’d have preferred she just let that car just hit that little girl?”</p><p>Bran knew she wouldn’t like the answer so he rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you for trying to be a friend to her.”</p><p>Leah did not have friends, at least she didn’t have what most would consider to be ‘friends’. Because she was her own worst enemy, Leah had pushed Anna away time and time again. Eventually she would stop trying; they always did.</p><p>“She doesn’t make it easy,” Anna agreed, mirroring his thoughts.</p><p>No, Leah was not ‘easy’. She was predictable, however, which was almost the same thing.</p><p>He took the duffel bag he used for short trips up to his room, tossed the dirty clothes into the hamper and ignored the closed door between their rooms. He showered, to wash away the airplane stink, all the while aware that Leah’s anxiety was ratcheting upwards in the room next door.</p><p>He wondered how she would start her defense tonight. Sometimes she’d try anger, be argumentative. Give him some kind of unlikely excuse. <em>But Bran, I did it for the pack!</em> She could also turn on the waterworks, though she didn’t like to. It felt like weakness, to her, and she didn’t like anyone to think her weak, especially him.  </p><p>No, she wouldn’t play that card tonight, not when she knew how angry he was. Not when she had felt, for two days, the building of his rage, when he had deliberately let it leak through to her, kept her up at night.</p><p>He put a pair of sweatpants on and walked into her room.</p><p>Fear, Bran thought. Tonight all she would have was fear.</p><p>*</p><p>Bran made Leah cower at the foot of her bed, made her curl into a ball, her hands over her face. He shouted at her, called her a <em>stupid, selfish girl </em>and other, less-than-flattering names. She cried, nothing faked about it. Tears of regret and fright dripped down onto the floorboards beneath her.</p><p>It was only when she was at her weakest did he kneel down.</p><p>“Tell me truthfully now, mate of mine,” he said, keeping his voice low and even, almost kind. “Did you do it on purpose?”</p><p>Leah’s head shot up, shocked eyes still swimming with tears that fell as he watched. She met his gaze fleetingly before lowering it to the floor once again. “No. Bran, I swear, I just— just didn’t think. I’m sorry.” Her face crumpled and she hid it in her hands, her crying intensifying, her breathing frantic.</p><p>He stood. “I believe you. But the fact that you didn’t even think about it just makes it worse. You are a danger to us, now.”</p><p>Bran left her, sobbing painfully on the floor of her bedroom, and went to get something to eat.</p><p>*</p><p>The beast inside of him was perverse. No sooner than Bran had reduced Leah to nothing, the wolf wanted to soothe her. It was right to punish her, he thought, but then he needed to show her care. Bran ate a sandwich standing over the sink in the kitchen and sighed. He really had thought she had done it on purpose. It was the sort of fool idea she would get into her head to get his attention. Sometimes she did things like that when she was particularly unhappy – and he would be the first to acknowledge that Leah had been very unhappy for a very long time.</p><p>He put the plate in the dishwasher and went back upstairs. Her bedroom was dark and she was just a small lump curled up under her comforter on the far side of the bed. As he watched, he saw her tremble – perhaps because she knew he was watching or because she was still roiling from her earlier crying.</p><p>Bran crawled across her bed and tucked himself behind her, stroking her hair back from her face. “We’ll work something out,” he told her.</p><p>“I’m really very sorry,” Leah whispered, her voice catching in the middle. “I’m so <em>sorry</em>.”</p><p>She was. She was heartbroken and guilty and he had made her cry until she couldn’t breathe. “I apologize for losing my temper,” he said, pressing his lips to the back of her head.</p><p>She didn’t say anything. Normally, there would be a blip of triumph at his apology – recognition than he had gone too far, as he always did, with her - but tonight he had clearly overpowered her until she was desensitized. She trembled again and he put his arm about her, pulling her close.</p><p>They stayed awake for a long time.</p><p>*</p><p>Charles had scheduled a meeting with the freelancers they hired for their PR work, a couple of young werewolves who were based out of New York and who they had used for some of the other more planned ‘outings’ of werewolves. Even though the wolves were part of one of the packs under Bran’s remit, they didn’t like to use the same people for each ‘outing’. Bran didn’t want too much knowledge of other wolves to sit within individual packs.</p><p>“Most of the online chatter is positive.” A chart flashed up on the screen to demonstrate this. “We’re looking at high seventies here, which is fantastic. It, ah, helps that Mrs. Cornick is a good looking young woman and the kid was cute,” Lawrence said nervously, no doubt pleased that they were having this meeting over video and not in person. He touched the top button of his shirt, a habit he had whenever he was talking to Bran.</p><p>Bran had no particular issues with men thinking Leah was attractive. She was. She was also strong, honest and creative – more useful skills than merely being decorative. Though he wasn't fool enough not to appreciate the latter. “And the negative? What are we looking at?”</p><p>“Well, again, because Mrs. Cornick is, ah—“ Lawrence hesitated and looked to his partner, flailing as he ran himself into trouble eagain.</p><p>“Good looking, yes, you mentioned,” Bran said, trying to move things along.</p><p>“Yes, that. As well as positive, it does lead to some obvious chatter. Comments about her proclivities and suchlike. The comments on the photo with her and David were pretty… rowdy.”</p><p>“Rowdy,” Charles repeated, lifting an eyebrow. Perhaps because imagining Leah as ‘rowdy’ was manifestly impossible.</p><p>Dominic took over, no doubt to rescue his failing partner, who sat back in his chair with relief. Dominic was more dominant and older by a couple of decades. Still, comparatively, a baby compared to Bran. “Yessir. For the most part indicating that they were more than friends. Which also seems to be what the tabloids are going with. Obviously nonsense but, well.”</p><p>“He’s a man and she’s a woman. Of course, why not,” Bran mused, seeing no particular problem with this. They could believe what they wanted; he didn’t care. Leah would never cheat on him, of that he was sure. If she flirted with men she did it purely so it would get back to him and he would be forced to react. “But nothing major to be concerned about? Death threads? Any indications of former sightings?”</p><p>“No, not yet. We’ll keep an eye on it, of course. Will Mrs. Cornick be making any more public appearances?” Dominic asked.</p><p>Bran could almost see the dollar signs appear in their eyes. Werewolf PR was a lucrative business. “Not for the time being,” he said, his tone dry as paper. “Thank you.”</p><p>*</p><p>Leah was instructed to lay low. She took this with unusual docility, hands pulling her cashmere sweater down over her palms, chin tilted upwards in haughty pretense. The only clarification she had was to ask whether or not she would still be allowed out for the full moon.</p><p>“Yes, of course. They don’t know what you look like as a wolf. And it’s just a precaution,” Bran told her, dismissively. David had been circumspect with their return journey, most of it done by car, making sure she couldn’t be traceable back to Aspen Creek. Still, Charles was having the security footage around the town proper – the motel, the garage/post-office – reviewed more regularly. Sporadic shopping trips aside, she didn’t make regular visits to nearby towns and cities, nor did she have regular contact with anyone outside of the pack. </p><p>He overheard the pack teasing her. Bullying, Leah would have called it, over-sensitive to what she considered to be her ‘due’. She had never quite understood that part of what made a ‘pack’ was the ability to take as well as give.</p><p>“Perhaps you should dye your hair, Leah,” Tag suggested. “Might I suggest a nice ginger like my own fine self?”</p><p>“Or a fetching brunette like our sweet Omega,” Asil joined in, drily, in the tone that told her exactly what he thought of her and it was nothing good. “But, hmm, not with your skin tone.”</p><p>He didn’t hear Leah’s responses because he closed his office door. They were all angry with her, under the teasing. She had risked their peaceful lives here and everyone knew it.  </p><p>*</p><p>When Christiansen next called, Bran was in Kansas looking at a decimated house that was the remains of the latest Hardesty witches abode. He had the Cheney Reservoir pack clearing it. There was something about the land that bothered him, he had been thinking, taking off his boots to walk around, to feel the grass and soil under his feet. There must be another reason why they would have been out here. Apart from – clearly – no one had been able to hear the screaming that had gone on between the walls.</p><p>“David,” he said, turning his back on the burnt out shell and walking towards his rented truck, parked on a dirt track between fields.</p><p>“Bran. My office has received a request from the little girl’s family,” Christiansen began, ignoring all the social niceties. “They would like to thank Leah, in person. Over, ah, tea.”</p><p>It had been nearly two months. Bran was instantly suspicious.</p><p>“They’ve apparently been trying to get hold of her through social media but I’m assuming you made sure that was unsuccessful. Eventually, a letter got through to my team here through a third party.”</p><p>Bran put his boots back on. “Leah doesn’t have ‘social media’. We instructed the agencies handling the PR and security to make as much content disappear as they could without being obvious.”</p><p>“The optics could be good,” was what David said.</p><p>He sighed. Just last week, Kara had come to his office, nervously, to ask if she and Leah could go shopping in Helena. He had sent her away with a flea in her ear, telling her that if Leah wanted to go shopping she should come to ask him first rather than send a child to do her dirty work. The child comment had annoyed Kara – as had the implied telling off - and Leah hadn’t come to ask him. “I’m not sure.”</p><p>“It doesn’t have to be big. You could orchestrate a private meeting in a neutral location.”</p><p>Bran thought about it. He would need to think about it some more. “Thank you for letting me know.”</p><p>He did up his laces and then gave Charles a call.</p><p>“Morning,” Charles said. “How did last night go?”</p><p>“Predictably,” was Bran’s response. “Listen, have we had any requests from the family of the little girl?”</p><p>“The one Leah threw herself in front of a car for?” Charles said. “There was a social media campaign to try and get her to meet with them. I asked Lawrence to do what he could do to stop it getting traction.”</p><p>“What do you think of the idea?”</p><p>“I think Leah would hate it.” Charles sounded disapproving.</p><p>Until this moment, Bran hadn’t considered Leah’s feelings on the matter. She would do what he thought was best.</p><p>“Are you thinking of a public meeting? Some photos?” his son asked.</p><p>“Something like that. Did you find out much about the family?” Being suspicious by nature often paid off. He wanted Charles to investigate the family for any ‘Other’ presence.</p><p>“Nothing really interesting about them. They rent an apartment on the Upper West side and his family is from New York, few generations. Her family’s from Nigeria. He’s an architect, she’s a homemaker, though she used to run a Pilates studio. They’re leaning a bit too heavily on their credit cards but her family is comfortably well off. The little girl was an IVF baby.”</p><p>“So all the more precious,” Bran surmised. He considered his initial reaction that it would have been better for them if the child had died and felt a moment of compassion, quickly dismissed.</p><p>“Yeah. Lots of failed attempts before she was conceived.”</p><p>Bran leaned against the truck and surveyed the flat landscape around him. You could see for miles, out here. Nowhere to hide. Certainly not for the victims in the basement of the witches’ house. He rubbed a hand over his face; he was tired.</p><p>*</p><p>Leah did hate it. She clenched her hands on the table and went white with anger. If it hadn’t been for the deliberately orchestrated presence of Charles and Anna, Bran knew she would have lost her temper. Leah didn’t like having arguments with him in front of other people, partly because, yes, she could be oddly old fashioned – a man and his wife should outwardly appear civilized at all times – but mostly because he usually won them and it would make her lose face. </p><p>Leah wasn’t the only one who was angry. Annoyance flickered in Charles’s eyes as he otherwise calmly ate his meal. Anna had put down her knife and fork to stare at him, her eyes glittering. Charles had long since warned her off engaging with Bran about his mating but she had not yet learnt to hide her feelings.</p><p>“It wouldn’t be public,” Bran said, clarifying. “In their house. David said he would escort you. No press, no fuss. Just a few photos taken inside.”</p><p>“Over tea,” Leah said, through her teeth.</p><p>Bran speared a carrot and ate it. He watched as his mate got herself under control. Her smile was brittle. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just check on dessert,” she said, putting her napkin down on the table and going to the kitchen.</p><p>The table she left behind was silent for a few moments, then - “I think I’ll go and help,” Anna said, pushing back her chair.</p><p>*</p><p>Their sexual compatibility had always been one of the few saving graces of their relationship. Many things could be ignored when their bodies came together. Many things could be communicated, too, as she held him down and he let her, watching her moving above him furiously, bringing herself to completion and not allowing him to finish.</p><p>He humored her, for a while, enjoyed her teasing, her flushed cheeks, the silky fall of her hair. Then he flipped them both, entering her hard and kissing her, bruisingly, moving to her neck to suck on the sensitive point that made her writhe under him.</p><p>“You’ll do it,” he said. “For me.”</p><p>Leah clawed at his back, hips rising to meet his. “<em>Bastard</em>,” she said.</p><p>She wasn’t wrong. He kissed her resisting mouth. “But you’ll do it.”</p><p>“Yes,” she said, biting him. “Yes, I’ll do it.”</p><p>*</p><p>She wore a cornflower blue dress that matched her eyes and the photos that emerged, first on the family’s social media, then to the tabloid press, showed her seated on the floor with a little girl, drinking tea from a child’s tea set.</p><p>Asil howled with laughter, a rare sound, holding up the newspaper copy. “There are <em>dolls</em>.”</p><p>Leah, who rarely swore, told Asil to go fuck himself and stormed up to her room.</p><p>Bran had a copy of the photograph printed and then propped it up against the pen pot on his desk. It was an absolutely extraordinary image. Leah was holding the tiny teacup delicately, little finger pointed out as was proper. Her blue eyes were on the child, face utterly serious. The little girl was mid-conversation, mouth parted, black curls dancing, caught behind a silky ribbon. By accident surely not design, the girl wore a dress similar to Leah’s, in pale yellow with white sneakers. In the background, out of focus, were the legs of three adults seated at an adult-sized table. The parents. Christiansen.</p><p>When he came to her bed that night, he was gentle with her and she was conciliatory.</p><p>“It wasn’t that awful,” she said, begrudgingly, afterwards when they were tangled up together.</p><p>He kissed her temple, rewarding her acknowledgement. “David said you were good with the child.”  </p><p>“She was fine. The parents were too nervous to speak to but she didn’t care.” Leah exhaled, sleepily. “I had a tea set, when I was a little girl.”</p><p>Indulging himself momentarily, Bran ran his cheek down the side of her face. “Did you?”</p><p>“On Sundays, after Church, my mother’s friends would bring their daughters and we’d have tea.” She fell deeply asleep, then, as she always did after sex. At moments like this, the bond between them hummed its strongest. She felt contented and safe and that soothed him. He stroked his hand down her back, feeling the knobs of her spine, the dimples on her lower back. His wolf rested.</p><p>*</p><p>Werewolves were always news and for a few weeks, the bad press was countered ably by the good press generated by David Christiansen’s latest intervention into the Middle East and, now, Leah. It was surprising how many ‘but they’re monsters!’ conversations could be stopped by the photograph of a woman having tea with a child.  Bran had to admit, it could have gone worse – and for the time being it seemed that Leah’s accident was benefiting them.</p><p>“Would you be willing to do more?”</p><p>Leah stomped on the edge of the shovel, digging out an area of lawn that she intended to turn into another flower bed. She was wearing her working clothes – a pair of jeans that had seen better days and one of his old T-shirts. There was a hole in the shirt over her left breast that showed the colourful sports bra she wore underneath and there was soil in her hair, streaked across her forehead. Little did she realise, but this – for Bran – was when she was at her most appealing. “Like what?” she asked, jiggling the shovel and then tossing a layer of sod aside.</p><p>“David occasionally gets invited to charity dinners and the like.”</p><p>She paused, pushed her hair out of her face. “Charity dinners? What would that involve?”</p><p>He shrugged. He’d never particularly asked for details. Apparently photographs of David in a tux trended positively, which seemed to be the main objective for the PR people. Positive PR meant improving their position within the demographics who were most concerned about werewolves. Put simply, the more people were favorable, the easier it would be for Bran to manipulate politicians in their service.</p><p>Leah looked away, out at the expansive view from their property. It was Spring now and the air smelt of new growth and all things fresh. The landscape was flourishing. A flicker of something crossed Leah’s face, gone before he could translate it. “It would be safer if I did things with him,” she said, eventually.</p><p>Bran agreed. She had a temper and an expressive, if not transparent, face. Here, surrounded by the pack, she could show her disdain for those around her, and frequently did, but for the humans she would need to control that. David could and would help. David was also more experienced with humans, whereas Leah only engaged with those few who were extensions of the pack. “We could probably get you some media training,” he said, thoughtfully, as if the thought hadn’t already occurred to him.</p><p>“Will doing this help? You? Us?” she asked, eyes lowered to the earth so she couldn’t look at him. Like his sons, Leah could often tell when he was lying. Unlike his sons, sometimes she preferred not to know.</p><p>“It already is.”</p><p>Leah glanced up and looked pleased, cheeks pinking slightly. “Okay.” She restarted her digging, then paused as she remembered. “Tag came by earlier to speak to you but you were on a call.”</p><p>He nodded. “I’ll call him now.”</p><p>*</p><p>The first was a film preview, a small independent movie that wanted to generate more press by having a werewolf ‘celebrity’ attend and be photographed. The film itself was more David’s area – a military reproduction of a little known WWII incursion – and Leah winced when she read the synopsis.</p><p>“Looks boring,” she said. Leah’s tastes ran more to popular movies with predictable plots.</p><p>It was convenient because it was in Seattle, during the annual film festival, which meant he had Angus on hand should anything go awry. It was also a reasonably small occasion. The PR team had already put pressure on the movie producers to ensure that David, and Leah’s, attendance wouldn’t be ‘announced’ in advance.</p><p>“You could come,” Leah suggested, quietly, one evening, after taking him through the online clothing purchases she’d ‘had to make’ in order to be properly representative of their people at the film festival. He’d humored her because it was a simple thing that gave her pleasure and afterwards he undressed her to give himself pleasure.</p><p>“Angus will keep an eye on you,” he said, getting out of bed to shower. When he was clean, she was already asleep so he went to his own bed for the rest of the night.</p><p>*</p><p>“I hope the producers are happy with the coverage,” Bran mused as he reviewed the follow-up the PR team had put together. Whilst the movie appeared in many of the articles, and on the backdrop in front of which Leah and David were photographed in their smart-casual finery, the rest of the coverage, the locally trending hashtag, had been focused on the werewolf attendees themselves. </p><p>“Ecstatic,” Dominic said, beaming. Dominic had been in Seattle to monitor the event directly. “They expressed their interest in working with us in the future. I said we’d keep an open mind. Obviously we’ve already started to have a whole slew of requests for attendances in future, including the usual horror flicks. I presume that’s still out of the question?”</p><p>Bran raised his eyebrows. Did he want reaction shots of Leah’s face as a ‘werewolf’ transformed on screen? No, probably not. “Out of the question. Low key, independent films only – to be reviewed by David.” Before Leah, David had declined such features. If he was going to be forced to sit through them, he might as well enjoy them.</p><p>“Noted. And I take at this point that we are continuing to accept invitations based on a pair? David plus one. Leah plus one?”</p><p>Bran’s cell started ringing. He checked the screen – Adam – and silenced it. “Yes.”</p><p>The woman whom had been brought in for media training had politely advised them that whilst she was ‘working’ with her, Leah should restrict her answers in public to a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. She said this without a hint of disapprobation after her first couple of sessions but Bran knew when given the choice between the ‘right answer’ and the ‘wrong one’, his mate would always go for the latter.</p><p>His phone rang again – Mercy – and this time Bran answered it. “I need to take this. Speak to Charles about setting up another meeting,” he said, hanging up the video call.</p><p>Mercy, on the other end of the line, laughed. “Adam’s ticked that you answered my call and ignored his.”</p><p>Bran smiled – because it obviously wasn’t an emergency but she was still calling him - and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me,” he said.</p><p>*</p><p>Despite the very proper distance Leah and David kept between each other at all times, the ‘rumors’ of their involvement frequently became The Story. There were small gestures that David naturally made that seemed to send the media into a veritable froth of excitement – helping Leah from a car, his hand on her elbow as he escorted her up flights of stairs, a gentle press at the small of her back to draw her attention to something. It was astonishing the level of obsessive detail they captured, Bran thought, flicking through a series of photographs one paper had decided were ‘newsworthy’ – images of the placement of David’s hand on Leah’s back and <em>what it meant.</em></p><p>Apparently it wasn’t possible for a male and female to be un-attracted to each other, made all the more unlikely by the fact that they were both werewolves. There was an undertone there, Bran acknowledged. Werewolves were animals and animals were indiscriminate.</p><p>A commotion in the communal living area caught his attention and he closed his laptop for the evening, followed the noise. He walked into an extraordinary scene. Four of his pack, excluding Leah, were repeatedly standing and squatting around the trio of couches that framed the large coffee table.</p><p>“No, no, tuck your foot behind <em>first</em>,” Leah was saying, pink-cheeked with embarrassment but laughing.</p><p>“What on earth is going on?” he asked.</p><p>Anna – giggling profusely – demonstrated - sinking to the ground, wobbling, before standing once again and making a ‘tah-dah’ motion with her hands. “We’re picking up something like <em>ladies</em> do.”</p><p>At Bran's appearance, Leah had buried her red face in a cushion.</p><p>Smiling helplessly, because it wasn’t often he found his mate was joining in with the laughter, Bran nevertheless shook his head. “I have no idea what that means.”</p><p>Anna scrambled for the TV remote and cued up footage of a popular daytime topical ‘news’ program. The sort of television he would normally consciously avoid. He watched as three overdressed human women of middle-age discussed Leah – who remained hidden in her cushion – in general terms with the support of still images on screen.</p><p>With excruciating detail, they assessed her clothes (chic, designer but not too high end), her hair (surely not her natural color), her physique (did werewolves need to go to the gym?). He raised his eyebrows at some of the ribald comments being made about his mate; they were very personal considering they didn’t know her. The three women then turned to the television audience, and presumably their studio audience, and - around him, the females in his pack started giggling in anticipation – invited them to participate in the first ever live <em>deportment class</em>. </p><p>“Oh,” Bran said, as the show played footage of Leah. On the red carpet of a nature documentary voiced by an International superstar, Leah was shown bending down to pick up something someone had dropped. Only she didn’t bend down. She, as Anna had demonstrated, tucked one foot behind the other, bent her knees and <em>sunk</em> – back straight - to the ground, the flounced skirt of her above-the-knee dress pooling around her, picked up what looked like a press pass, and then rose again. It was eminently graceful and, yes, he’d seen her do it before but so frequently he wouldn’t have noted it as particularly unusual.</p><p>On screen, one of the middle aged women screamed and demanded the footage be played again, more slowly. “The core strength, to do that maneuver, my God!”</p><p>“She must have been a dancer, truly. Ballet or something. I tried it and nearly fell flat on my face.”</p><p>“Nearly? I fell flat on my <em>ass</em>.” The women roared with laughter.</p><p>Leah, the real one, cleared her throat and leaned forward to turn the TV off, slowly taking back her usual haughty persona. “That’s enough, I think. You get the gist.”</p><p>The women in the pack sighed, saddened their fun was over. Leah picked up a couple of empty glasses and effectively dismissed them all by going into the kitchen.</p><p>Anna, flopped back on the couch, smiled at Bran in a way that suggested she was pleased with him. He jumped over the couch and flopped down next to her. “What’s happening with you?” he asked her.</p><p>*</p><p>It wasn’t all seamless, of course. There were Interested Parties intensively investigating Leah’s background, what there was of it and each week they received indications of new attempts.</p><p>Leah Cornick didn’t really exist, of course, in the same way that he didn’t. And the name she had used to book the hotel room, that matched the pre-paid card she had used to pay for it, also didn’t exist. Charles was spending a not inconsiderable amount of his time ensuring there was no money trail tying Leah to Aspen Creek.</p><p>“At least she doesn’t have a bank account,” Bran reflected whilst Charles gave him a brief run-down of all of this week’s attempts to find his mate.  </p><p>“She does. I set one up for her a few years ago.” Charles glanced up at him briefly before returning to his tablet. “You must have noticed she was no longer asking you for money.”</p><p>Bran frowned. “But she does ask me for money. The first of the month.”</p><p>Charles’s face went carefully blank. “I see.”</p><p>Bran looked away, the duplicity of his mate no longer astonishing him the way it used to. In fact, he snorted, it was <em>more</em> duplicitous than he would give her credit for. He put aside his anger for a moment. “I’ll speak to her about that. Is the bank account under an assumed name?”</p><p>“Yes. And we use a third party to deposit the money from our bank accounts for her allowance, varying the numbers, the date it’s deposited, and keeping it under sums that would raise suspicion.”  </p><p>“And any withdrawals she makes?” There would be bank footage, ATM footage, of Leah taking money out.</p><p>Charles shook his head, handing Bran a print out of her bank statement from the folder on the table. “She doesn’t. She hasn’t touched the money.”</p><p>Bran frowned down at the numbers. Her allowance, as Charles termed it, was Leah’s spending money – the money he had assumed she was spending on shoes and her annual fashion week shopping spree. It was generous as it was – he wasn’t going to unduly restrict her when they were a wealthy family and he had always made sure to increase it according to inflation. Charles had opened the account in the late 90s and, presumably spending the half she received from him directly in cash, she had built herself a tidy nest egg.</p><p>“She is unbelievable,” Bran said, shaking his head, honestly mystified by this behavior.</p><p>*</p><p>Bran had to punish her for effectively stealing, of course, and he had to do it in a way that would be painful to her but also not be truly demeaning, at least not in the eyes of the rest of the pack. She was their Alpha’s mate and was not above the law, but deserved their respect, so he had to get creative. Two weeks ‘helping’ Asil, coupled with following his every command to the letter, seemed to do it.</p><p>She took her punishment with a firm nod. “Yes, Bran,” she said, eyes lowered.  </p><p>He pinched her chin, lifted her head. “You could have just asked me for more money, Leah. I would have given it willingly.”</p><p>She pulled her chin from between his fingers. “I shouldn’t have to <em>ask</em> you for money,” she said, mortification transforming her and anger making her eyes glitter with starlight. Bran reflected that few women wore anger so well as she did. He wanted to kiss her as much as he wanted to punish her.</p><p>“You never used to be embarrassed.”</p><p>“It’s—it’s different now. Women don’t have <em>allowances</em>.”</p><p>Bran suspected quite a few still did but wasn’t going to argue the point. “Might I remind you,” he said, because sometimes they both needed to be reminded of their shared past, “you used to be fairly profligate. Hmm?” He hadn’t always been wealthy, that had really only come later, when both he and Charles had been managing the business, making shrewd investments and eventually profiting from them. Leah had spent money as soon as she got her hands on it. He had been forced to control her financially, too tired of the constant arguing over unpaid bills.</p><p>Leah’s mouth dropped open. “That was more than a <em>hundred</em> years ago, you patronising son-of-a-bitch.” She let out a short, sharp clenched-teeth scream. “Fine. Two weeks with Asil will be <em>pleasant</em> compared to spending time with <em>you</em>.”</p><p>He laughed at her, even as she stormed out of his office. She slammed the door so hard a picture frame fell from his wall.</p><p>Later, he called Asil and Asil chuckled, darkly. “Oh, yes, I have some things for our Leah to do.”</p><p>Bran frowned, pushing aside his disquiet. An incident, years ago, had poisoned Asil against Leah – one best forgotten. “She is your Alpha’s mate and you will show her her due, Asil.”</p><p>“But of course, Alpha,” Asil said, the darkness never leaving his voice.</p><p>*</p><p>The two weeks Leah spent working for Asil led to a dry spell between them, which Bran could have predicted. His beast gnawed at him irritably as his mate childishly gave him the cold shoulder, cold everything. She would relent, eventually, she always did but for now he suffered through it, pretending nothing was wrong.  </p><p>“There’s a dinner, on the 15<sup>th</sup>,” David called to tell him. “I know it’s short notice but it’s a favor for an old friend who needs to fill a table. Would Mrs. Cornick be available? And do you think Hauptman would be interested? It’s in Portland.”</p><p>It was early evening. Bran had just returned from a twilight run with Leah and a few others in the pack who happened to be in the house. They’d followed the trail of a couple of deer up towards Arsenic Creek, Leah taking the lead. She was a true huntress, his mate, one of the finest he had ever seen. She knew this land well, if not better than he did. She was the one who went off for runs alone, for hours at a time – it wasn’t something he had time for any more – and reported back on any changes she had found. Landslides, fallen trees, anthills the size of boulders. In her head there was a detailed map of their surroundings.  </p><p>Bran watched her as she dressed in the sweats they kept in their side porch – a pair of normal dark blue sweatpants and then a strangely short top which left her abdomen bare. It was odd – probably ‘fashion’ – but appealing for the vulnerable, unblemished golden skin it revealed. With the wolf so close to the surface from their run, he wanted to touch, wanted to bite. Instead, he reached out to put his arm around her, pulling her close.</p><p>She snapped her teeth at him, like her wolf would have done. Still mad, he thought, smiling down at her. On the phone, to David, he said, “Dinner, yes. I don’t know about Adam. You’ll have to speak to him.”</p><p>Leah recoiled. Adam meant Mercy, whose defiance had uprooted Leah’s sense of hierarchy. He held her still with a glare that demanded obedience and she went limp, unresisting, her head resolutely turned away.</p><p>“I’ll do that. I’ll send through the details.”</p><p>“I’m not going to dinner with her,” Leah said petulantly, when he hung up.</p><p>He tossed the phone onto one of the seat pads and wrapped his other arm around her waist, stroking the warm skin. “It will be a good test of your media training.”</p><p>Leah was leaning back from him, hands pushing at his shoulders like a kitten, pretending she wasn’t enjoying being in his arms. He could hear her pulse racing. She bit her lip, an unconscious signal that she was receptive. “I won’t speak to her.”</p><p>“Exactly.” Bran bent his head and kissed her. She was all teeth and then she wasn’t, opening beneath him eagerly, arms sliding around his neck. <em>Finally</em>, he thought, sparing a thought to the rest of the pack inside, boisterously laughing and shouting, as he slid his hands up her ridiculous top. The wolf would have her now, in the side porch, where anyone could approach, and wouldn’t care either way.</p><p>She pulled back. “Are you thinking of her right now?” she said sharply.</p><p>Bran blinked, mouth chasing hers. “Who?” he asked, and for a moment he really didn’t know.  </p><p>Leah swallowed, staring at him intently, her mouth pink. Bran felt like they were standing on a knife-edge of things unspoken, things he didn’t want to talk about. She held them there, for in this she held all the power, and then she pulled them back. “No one,” she whispered eventually.  </p><p>Relieved that once again they had avoided that moment, he nudged her nose with his own, testing her, then she leaned up and kissed him.</p><p>*</p><p>They had prepared Leah to answer four personal questions. It had been explained to them that ‘no comment’ would only cut it for so long, as would Leah’s utterly faked shyness. </p><p>“What’s your name?” he tested her.</p><p>She crossed her feet at her ankles, somehow transforming her jeans-and-white-t-shirt combination into something a little more upscale with that very move. “Lea Carmichael.”</p><p>“How old are you?”</p><p>“It’s extremely rude to ask a lady her age.” She batted her eyelashes at him and he laughed. She preened a little. </p><p>He sat forward, folding his arms on his desk and continued his interrogation, “Where were you born?”</p><p>“Nebraska.” This was true, technically, though she could neither remember <em>where</em> or even precisely <em>when</em>. As if mirroring his thoughts, Leah pulled a face, as if forgetting something of this magnitude was worrying. He smiled. She was comparatively young; there was plenty of time to forget other, bigger things. </p><p>“Are you married, Lea Carmichael?” he asked softly.</p><p>Leah hesitated, as practiced, and tilted her head to the side, expression carefully neutral. “Let’s just say, I’m not looking for anything right now,” she said, thoughtfully.</p><p>“Perfect,” Bran said. Considering he would have previously had assumed Leah would be a dreadful actress, she had been reasonably convincing, particularly with the last question. “And anything else, you just ignore or talk about the weather.”</p><p>*</p><p>If he’d prescribed much thought to it, he would have supposed that Mercy would have rejected the idea of attending a social function such as a <em>charity dinner</em>. Portland wasn’t even their territory. Even if she had agreed in principle, hearing that she would be sharing a table with a woman who had <em>mercilessly</em> attacked her during her teenage years would have put the final nail in the coffin.</p><p>He was honestly astonished to hear they were attending. “What’s the name of the charity? I don’t think I heard?”</p><p>“Landmine Free World,” Charles said. Bran grunted; Adam had served in Vietnam. It was Charles who had heard from Mercy which, Bran supposed, was her clever way of getting this piece of information to him, rather than telling him directly. Their discussions regarding Leah had never gone well. Charles sat forward in his seat and clasped his hands together between his legs. “Will you speak to Leah?”</p><p>Bran’s instant irritation at the implied criticism of his mate was repressed because Charles was only being honest. Charles had spent much of Mercy’s teenage years acting as bodyguard, a fact that Bran had studiously ignored. “I will have to,” he said, not remotely relishing that conversation.</p><p>Receiving two surprises in one day, when he broached the topic with Leah as she was layering a lasagna, she barely reacted. “David told me. I’ve explained that we don’t get on,” she said, not for one moment acknowledging the massive oversimplification that was. He barely suppressed his noise of derision – it was dangerous enough territory as it was. “It’s a table for ten and he’s going to arrange it so she’s not even in polite speaking distance and I don’t have to look at her.”</p><p>Something about this annoyed him and he wasn’t sure what. “That’s good. Do you know who the other guests are?” Just in case there was anyone else he needed to be worried about.</p><p>“A pro-werewolf millionaire and her husband. <em>She</em> might be interesting,” Leah said, neatly placing the noodles on top of the sauce. “Lorenzo and his wife, Sofia, from David’s team. The other two, I forget. They weren’t notable. Apparently there’s dancing at these things.” This last was delivered in a lighter tone. Leah had always liked to dance. There had been time – throughout the 70s and 80s - that she had attended classes, he thought. Salsa, ballroom, swing, even ballet.  </p><p>“I wouldn’t get your hopes up with regards to the quality,” he said, taking a spoon from a drawer and trying the meat sauce. Hers was always better than his, though they ostensibly always used the same recipe. She had joked once that it was because hers was made <em>with love</em> and then neither of them had ever mentioned it again.</p><p>“No, you’re probably right,” she said, with a bit of a sneer. She nudged him away from the sauce. “Are you hungry? There’s still leftover chicken in the refrigerator, which Tag somehow missed during his mid-afternoon raid.”</p><p>“Really?” Bran went to investigate.</p><p>*</p><p>He didn’t keep his cell phone in his bedroom, confident that if there was an emergency that required telephonic communication, people in the know would use the landline first. He had resisted a cell phone for a long time, having really only just accepted a landline. Now he could see it was becoming essential for contacting people immediately. These days, everything tended to require immediacy.  </p><p>Consequently, he didn’t see Mercy’s message until late morning, after attending one of the therapy sessions with the newly Changed, a task Leah usually carried out. He clicked on the little video Mercy had sent with the smiley face and it popped into full screen.</p><p>For a moment, he couldn’t quite work out what he was seeing – it looked like the backs of two men, men he didn’t recognize. Then he understood he was supposed to be looking at the space between them, a sliver of movement as Adam Hauptman, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, in a tuxedo, spun Leah across a dance floor.</p><p>The video footage was terrible quality but even he could see that Leah was beaming with happiness, her silky green dress spinning around her knees as Adam turned and twisted her, as she kicked her feet and anticipated his movements. Swing music played in the background, upbeat, joyful. He heard a laugh – and it was Mercy’s – and the camera flipped to reveal her face up close. Her hair was curled, hung long down one side of her face. Her dark eyes were brimming with laughter. She wore lipstick; he didn’t think he had ever seen her wear lipstick. “Bran, how come I never knew Leah could <em>dance?</em>” she whispered dramatically to the camera.</p><p>The video ended with a blur as Mercy put the phone down and stopped recording. Bran re-watched it and paused on Mercy, happy to see her smiling face, before he rewound to hold steady on Leah, then paused, rewound, paused, rewound to watch her face, her body move at the hands of another man.</p><p>He put his phone down. Considered for a moment. Then he picked it up and typed out a message. He loathed text messages, as a general rule, but he didn’t want to call her for this reason. <em>All went well?</em></p><p>Mercy replied half an hour later. <em>Surprisingly! Did you see the video? She even (begrudgingly) taught me some moves after.</em></p><p>Clearly, Bran thought, the world was ending.</p><p>*</p><p>It was Kara who brought up the lack of birthdays celebrated in the pack. Like many a young person, her own birthday was expected to be acknowledged and celebrated. That no one else seemed to do the same, even though they all looked young, was baffling to her.</p><p>“What do you mean you can’t remember your birthday? How do you know how old you are?” she’d asked Tag, plaintively.</p><p>Tag, bemused to be faced with a question he hadn’t had to consider for decades, shook his head. “It’s not as important, <em>a leanbh</em>,” he said, trying to distract her with cupcakes. “Here. Try the strawberry cheesecake one.”</p><p>It had been Anna who had suggested they just designate a birthday day for those that wanted to be acknowledged. Most had thought it ridiculous – Asil, in particular, had vociferously derided the idea – but Bran had been charmed. “Leah and I will celebrate our birthdays on the Summer solstice,” he announced.</p><p>Leah had looked askance at him. “We will?” she repeated, not sharply, but curiously, as if she hadn’t expected to be included.</p><p>Bran had felt overly clever. By incorporating her into <em>his</em> birthday, everyone would be obliged to celebrate her, which she would like and would save on any jealous feelings.  </p><p>“But, Bran,” Anna laughed, “the Summer solstice moves every year. You’re supposed to pick an <em>immovable</em> date.”</p><p>“Why? I like the Summer solstice. It has meaning.”</p><p>So it was. Every year on the Summer Solstice, they held a joint birthday celebration, usually outdoors, with a BBQ and an evening run. Gifts were only accepted if they were under $5, the sillier the better. Leah had a collection of plastic jewelry that she kept in a carved wooden box on her dressing table from him and he had a series of terrible magic tricks from her, which was a joke he considered to be particularly witty. This year’s involved a magic wand that dispensed handkerchiefs. “This is very clever,” he said appreciatively, kissing her cheek in front of them all and pushing a flashing cocktail ring onto her wedding finger. She, like him, wore no wedding ring. They had never actually been married.</p><p>She sighed at the ring. “Oh, look it changes colors,” she acknowledged in a monotone, holding it out as expected for everyone to admire.</p><p>For Christmas each year, he gave her fine jewelry, because it was what she liked and what she expected. He enjoyed the challenge of finding her the ugliest plastic equivalent for their ‘birthday’ and the expression of deep resignation on her face as she wore it. Later, he knew, he would see her looking at it secretly, smiling, and in it would go into her box of keepsakes, along with all the gold and precious stones that he had given her over the years.</p><p>“Oh. There’s also something for Leah. It arrived this afternoon whilst you were out,” Kara said, excusing herself from the table, padding to the front hall and returning with a box. Kara had been in charge of baking the cake – a three tiered monstrosity that was a little lopsided and all the more endearing for it. She had insisted she needed to ‘work alone’ so Leah and Bran had been forced to evacuate the building whilst the baking took place, eventually going on a hike together, each quiet in their own thoughts.</p><p>“Here you go,” the teenager said, unceremoniously plonking the box in front of Leah before dropping back down into her seat at the head of the table.</p><p>Leah used her thumbnail to slice open the sticky tape and pull open the box, her curiosity overriding her desire to create a fanfare. She fished out a card, brow furrowed. “Oh, it’s from David Christiansen,” she said, surprised. “I think he thinks it’s my real birthday.”</p><p>“Ah, that would be my fault,” Charles said, owning up to it with a raised hand. “Last time we spoke, I’d just found your present.”</p><p>She unwrapped the box, lifting the lid. From across the table, Bran could only see her expression, the unfolding of sheer delight and, then, laughter. She tipped her head back with it, laughing in a way she rarely did – helplessly, convulsively. “Oh my gosh,” she said, pulling out a teapot for them all to see.</p><p>Most of the pack laughed with her, seeing the joke and enjoying it, perhaps more so because it was a joke at Leah’s expense. Bran found himself having to force a smile.</p><p>“It’s a tea set,” Kara cried happily, leaning over his mate eagerly to look in the box. “That’s funny! Oh, it’s so cute.”</p><p>Leah allowed this intrusion into her personal space, something she would never normally have allowed from a werewolf female, which said more about her currently contented mental state than anything else. She turned the box so Kara could investigate. “Why don’t you go put it on the dining table?” she suggested. “We don’t want it to be broken accidentally.”</p><p>Later, whilst everyone was changing for the run, Bran went to look at the tea set. David had been very careful not to overstep. It was a good-quality product but not an expensive ‘name’ brand, nothing overly sentimental.</p><p>He opened the card. It was pre-printed, and there was no hint of his scent, which meant David hadn’t chosen this gift himself, probably ordered it from a website and had it wrapped as part of the service.</p><p><em>Happy Birthday.</em> <em>Keep up the tea party practice! DC</em></p><p>“Is it okay?” Leah asked, from the doorway.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Bran said, because it was. He put the card down and went to her. “I thought you’d gone to change with the others.”</p><p>“I was waiting for you.”</p><p>Because he could, because there was no one around to see it, because she was still wearing the flashing ring and she looked relaxed and soft, he rubbed the back of her neck. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. Then they both heard the howls outside and smiled.</p><p>*</p><p>They had a few months of respite, as David had some work commitments that took him off grid. Bran was, not glad of it, precisely, but appreciative of the silence.</p><p>“What do you think of this one?”</p><p>Bran looked up from where he was going through his drawers, pulling out T-shirts that had seen better days. Every few months, Leah did a run around the pack, gathering donations for one of those organizations that sent requests through the mail. She didn’t like waste and this sort of recycling appealed to her, the once-daughter of good middle-class Christians. She had been bothering him for a week to go through his clothes and become so irritating about it that he’d gone upstairs during the working day to do it.</p><p>“You look like a dominatrix,” he said, eyeing the wig she had covered her hair with. He also wanted to say that the darker hair made her eyes look a deeper shade of blue, the sharp ends that pulled under her chin drew attention to the soft pinkness of her mouth. She looked more exotic than the Nordic iciness he was used to.</p><p>She cocked her head. “Is that bad?”</p><p>Only Leah, he thought, with a small snort out loud. He dropped a T-shirt on the floor which had a hole in the sleeve. “It’s a little noticeable, which seems to defeat the point.”</p><p>She padded back into her room and returned with a pair of black-framed glasses, which she put on. “What about now?”</p><p>A frisson of desire hit him, coming out of nowhere. Bran pressed his lips together, as if he could control it, and abruptly closed the drawer he was sorting, starting intently towards her.</p><p>Leah’s eyes flared, almost alarmed. “Really?” she said, walking backwards towards her bed with enough speed that Bran’s wolf felt the edge of the chase. “The glasses?”</p><p>Very much the glasses, Bran thought hungrily, pressing her to the bed.  </p><p>*</p><p>Bran received an email on Monday morning. He read it through and then sent it to print, taking it to Leah in the living area. She was watching a show with very shrill characters, Bran thought, casting a look at the screen.</p><p>“Don’t pretend you don’t watch rubbish as well,” Leah said pertly at his visible disapproval, snatching the paper he proffered. “I know you have episodes of that terrible crime drama downloaded onto your phone.”</p><p>Deciding not to be annoyed about something she could only have found out by going through said phone, Bran grinned. “It’s a masterpiece.” Of nonsense, he admitted. </p><p>She scanned through the email and he felt the rising excitement that she quickly smothered. “Really?” she said, blinking up at him.</p><p>“Do you want to?”</p><p>Leah lowered her eyes so he couldn’t see how much she did. “I’ve never heard of Sean Lopez.”</p><p>“Well, doesn’t this television connect to the Internet? We could look him up.”</p><p>She reached for the remote and he dropped down onto the other couch, whilst she brought up the application that allowed her to search for video. She carefully typed the name of the ‘celebrity dance instructor’ of Dominic’s email and quickly found his channel. She scrolled through his videos until she found one she liked the look of and pressed play.</p><p>Bran found himself more interested in studying Leah’s face than the TV. She was totally absorbed, a little furrow between her brows as she clicked through different videos teaching different dances. He had seen Leah kill, seen her rip the throats out from her victims – both as wolf and as a human. For years, he had sent her to do the necessary executions, what would later become solely Charles’s job when Bran started to feel she was enjoying it a little too much. Today, she jiggled on the couch to the beat of the music, kneeling on the couch like a little girl.</p><p>“Shall I tell them you’re interested?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.</p><p>Leah dragged her eyes away from the screen. She was a little flushed with excitement. “I would like to know what he has in mind, first. And why,” she added, hurriedly. She paused and went back to the homepage of his Channel to show him. “He has millions of subscribers. What does he think having a werewolf guest star would do for him?”</p><p>Proud of her for thinking of the bigger picture, Bran stood up and stretched. “It’s a good question.”</p><p>“Bran?” she asked, as he headed to his office. “This—this doesn’t seem like the other things? Is it still useful?”</p><p>He smiled at her. “It’s potentially both useful and something you might enjoy. The best of both worlds.”</p><p>Abruptly, the expression of hopefulness on her face – of her raw happiness - was too difficult for Bran to look at. Back in his office, he resolved to see less of her that week. Because of the situation she had generated, he was spending more time with her, more time thinking about her, than he was generally used to. As such, the space in his head where Leah was neatly boxed was pressing against its boundaries, trying to spill over.</p><p>It was above time that he started to box her back in.</p><p>*</p><p>Bran orchestrated it so that his next work trip coincided with the week before she circuitously flew to California, which meant he wouldn’t see her for two weeks. He had vague plans for something else to ‘come up’ on her return but wanted to wait to see how he felt closer to the time. He’d put real effort into keeping his distance in the weeks before her next engagement as their goodtime werewolf girl (as Asil termed it) but the pressure of her presence was still bothering him.</p><p>Leah was hurt and angry, of course, but it wasn’t the first time he had pulled back from her and wouldn’t be the last.</p><p>“I’ll be leaving early tomorrow,” he told her in front of a few of the pack as they ate dinner outside. It was a potluck, which meant the food was eclectic – his plate currently held a pasta salad, some spring rolls and something odd Tag had brought that might have been a kind of South-East Asian dish gone glutinously wrong.  </p><p>“What time?” she asked, stripping chicken from a chicken leg with a knife and fork, rather than picking it up and eating it with her fingers like everyone else. </p><p>“Early,” he said, dismissively.</p><p>She rolled her eyes, deliberately doing it so he could see it – a test to see if he would call her on it in front of the others. He finished his meal and picked up his plate. “I’ll be in my office. Charles, can I speak to you when you’re done?”</p><p>Charles nodded but when Bran turned to leave, he saw his son’s reflection in the sliding doors as he turned to look at his own mate with resignation.</p><p>“What was that about?” Bran asked when Charles finally joined him.</p><p>“You know exactly what,” Charles said, dampeningly, not willing to be drawn in. “What did you want to speak to me about?”</p><p>Bran sighed. “I think I want you to go with Leah to California.” He tapped his fingers on his desk.</p><p>“You think she needs support?”</p><p>“I think she needs managing,” he corrected.</p><p>Charles said nothing for a moment, just watched Bran with his penetrating eyes. “She told Anna she was nervous.”</p><p>“Did she?” Bran was surprised Leah would admit anything of the kind. But then Anna was an Omega. Her persuasive powers would work on Leah just as it would anyone else. Leah was unusually resistant, perhaps because she was female. Perhaps because she was <em>that</em> stubborn. “Will you go?”</p><p>“Anna will,” Charles said, standing up before Bran gave him leave to do so. “She would like to, I think. And I would just put Leah’s back up.”</p><p>Bran wanted to protest – to insist - but something about the set of Charles’s mouth warned him not to. His son could be stubborn as well and the waves of disapproval coming from him were palpable. “Fine.” Besides Anna was helpful. And recently human. She may well be able to navigate better than David, even. </p><p>His son sighed. “She doesn’t need managing, Da. She needs our support. She’s only doing this because you asked her to and she thinks it’s good for the pack.”</p><p>Bran dismissed this. “Don’t romanticize, her, Charles. She likes the attention.”</p><p>Charles frowned. “She likes attention here. In her home, surrounded by our pack. Out there is a whole other world. That’s a difficult prospect for anyone, particularly the Marrok’s mate.” At Bran’s sharp, chastising look, Charles inclined his head. “But of course you know her best.”</p><p>“Get out,” Bran said, pointing at the door. He was grateful he was going to be away from them all for a while. He frequently thought Sam had it right, choosing the life of a lone wolf.</p><p>*</p><p>Leah avoided cell phones, far more than he did. He didn’t expect to hear from her whilst she was in California and he would never normally have contacted her, unless it was to update her on his schedule.</p><p>The week with the pack in Wichita did him good. He’d always found Michael an easy-going Alpha, not prone to the hot-headedness of some of his contemporaries. He was recently mated, to a young werewolf – Selena - who found Bran almost comically intimidating. He tried to be kind. As a couple they reminded him strongly of when Charles and Anna were first mated, down to the almost sickly sweetness between them.</p><p>The only time Selena actively spoke to him directly was to ask about Leah, on the last night. She had clearly built herself up to speaking a full sentence to Bran on a subject she thought would be an obvious, easy topic. “We’ve all been talking about the show on the Group. I can’t wait to see the episode.”</p><p>The way in which she said ‘Group’ pricked Bran’s ears. “On the Group?”</p><p>“On our WhatsApp group.” Selena gave her mate a look, as if to check if she was speaking out of turn. Michael smiled back at her, encouraging. “The ones for all the Alpha females. It’s encrypted,” she added, quickly. “And we don’t talk about anything sensitive. Just. You know, chit chat.”</p><p>Bran had, of course, heard of ‘WhatsApp’ but he barely used text messages as it was. “Would you mind if I saw it?” he asked, mildly.</p><p>Selena fetched her phone and handed it to him. When he stared at it blankly, she blushed and quickly loaded the app, and the ‘group’ in question and then instead of taking her seat, sat on her mate’s lap. At least, Bran reflected, Charles and Anna had not done that.</p><p>Bran scrolled through the messages. There were plenty of them. ‘L’ appeared the most frequently and he quickly gathered this was Leah.</p><p>As the girl had said, it was mostly chit chat. Nothing more incriminating than the occasional ‘have a great night’ on a full moon. He clicked on the list of participants – nearly thirty, almost as many packs in the United States – and noted they all had nicknames or just used their initial as their name. He sighed.</p><p>“I didn’t see any harm in it,” Michael said quietly, suddenly tensed in case Selena had committed an error. Selena was biting her bottom lip, worrying it.  </p><p>“It’s the cell phone numbers of almost every female Alpha in the US,” Bran mused. He paused on the participants list again and saw that ‘owner’ was indicated next to his mate’s phone number. She had two cell phones – this was the one she used at home, rather than the one she travelled with. “Did Leah set this up?”</p><p>Selena spoke up, “I think so. I was only recently invited. She’s been really helpful,” she said, as if complimenting his mate would help her situation.</p><p>Bran raised his eyebrows and, rather than dismiss this as being obviously spurious, asked, “With what?”</p><p>Selena smiled tentatively and gave her mate a coquettish look. “Just for advice and things. Michael tries but there are some things only a woman in a similar position can answer.”</p><p>Bran wondered whether the advice his mate was giving could conceivably be considered ‘good’. He looked at the content again. There was even a message from today. <em>Did you know the waltz could be sexy???? - L</em></p><p>He scowled.</p><p>*</p><p>Bran lay in bed for over two hours and finally gave in, calling her.</p><p>“Hello!” she said brightly, answering immediately.</p><p>“Did you really set up a cell phone group with <em>all the Alpha females in Northern America</em>?” he demanded.</p><p>Leah was silent for a long, long moment. And then slowly, as if it physically pained her, she said, “I’m going to hang up and turn off my phone. We can talk when I see you again.”</p><p>Bran sat up in bed. “Wha—“ But it was too late. She had gone.</p><p>He redialed immediately but it went straight to voicemail.</p><p>Without a second’s thought, he sent his fury down the mate bond to her. <em>How dare you? </em>he screamed and it reverberated between them, like the echo in a cavernous well. He could feel her recoiling.</p><p>Less than ten seconds later, his phone rang. Charles. “What?”</p><p>“Leave her alone,” Charles said. “Whatever it is, leave her alone.”</p><p>“How dare <em>you</em>,” he said, incensed. <em>Anna</em>, he thought. Anna must have called Charles. Had he totally lost control of them? What was going on with his family?</p><p>“Da, you will regret this tomorrow.” Then Charles hung up.</p><p>Bran crushed his phone.</p><p>*</p><p>Bran did regret it. He bought a cheap cell phone at the airport and slid in his SIM card. He called her number again. It rung and rung and when it finally connected to her voicemail, he said, “I’m sorry. I really am. Call me when you can.”</p><p>When he landed at Bozeman, he called her again, but didn’t leave a voicemail because there really were limits. He was home for twenty minutes before Charles pulled up in the front drive.  </p><p>“Anna thinks you both need therapy,” Charles said, smiling grimly, as if he found the idea extremely entertaining but also faintly terrifying.</p><p>“Probably,” Bran admitted. Then, “I’ve called to apologize.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>“She didn’t pick up.”</p><p>Charles nodded. “She’s home tomorrow, right?”</p><p>“When did you become such an advocate for my mate?” he asked curiously, instead of answering. It was a question he had been dwelling on sub-consciously for some weeks. The rapprochement he’d noted between Charles and Leah had surprised him. Anna, too. That Anna had called Charles to ask him to back off spoke volumes.</p><p>“We had reason to spend more time together, recently,” Charles stated baldly, “when you closeted yourself in a hotel waiting for me to kill her because to do so yourself  would break your heart.”</p><p>He felt like Charles had stabbed him. Bran pulled in a deep breath and held it. “Yes. That was it,” he said, blowing out the hot air. <em>That was it. </em></p><p>*</p><p>Bran put his book down when he heard Leah drop her suitcase in the front porch. He listened to her take off her shoes, put them away neatly, then for her keys to go into the bowl. Her bare feet padded to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water. Drank it, rinsed the glass and put it away. Then, she appeared in his open office doorway.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said again, straight away, before she could say something that would put him off.</p><p>Bran looked her over. Her hair was loose but kinked, as if she had just unpinned it. She was wearing dark, tight jeans – very tight – and a dark green top that wrapped around her torso, showing the V of her cleavage. Her fingernails and toenails were painted red. He could count on one hand the number of times she had to his knowledge painted her nails.</p><p>“Okay,” she replied, shrugging and looking away, out of his window. There was no sense of triumph from her. “I ran the Group through Charles when I set it up.”</p><p>“He told me. He told me you also checked it with him again after you became public. You were responsible,” Bran admitted, carefully, another apology for his mistake. Charles had also told him that it had never occurred to him to tell Bran because he didn’t care about the Alpha mates. That was Leah’s responsibility. And that they all had the phone numbers of the Alphas on their cells. Leah’s risk was no higher than anyone else’s.</p><p>Leah nodded again, eyes skidding briefly across his face before fixing on the lamp behind him as it was the most fascinating piece in his office. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to unpack and wash the stink off of me.”</p><p>“There’s nothing else,” he said. He lifted his book. She left.</p><p>*</p><p>Anna invited everyone to the airing of Leah’s ‘special’ at her house, which Bran knew reflected poorly on himself that he hadn’t thought to do so. It also left him in a conundrum as perhaps his attendance might put a dampener on events. Things were fine between them he thought, but he didn’t want to make things worse and he didn’t want to ruin something Leah had found pleasure in. He wasn’t <em>petty</em>.</p><p>“It would definitely be worse if you didn’t come,” Anna told him, crossly when he had seemed reticent to accept her invitation. “Can’t you just communicate like a normal couple?”</p><p>He raised his eyebrows at her tone and suggested she take it with her as she left, which she did with something of a flounce. She was charming but sometimes a little simplistic, he thought. Anna couldn’t comprehend a mating that wasn’t as simple as hers had been. <em>Love at first sight.</em></p><p>Leah was in the kitchen, as he knew, so had heard the entire conversation. She was eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon and leaning against the kitchen island. He got his own spoon and she proffered the jar to him. “She’s young,” Leah said, shrugging.</p><p>“She’s frequently, annoyingly, right,” he replied, kissing her temple. “I am sorry.”</p><p>The corner of her mouth tilted up. “You keep saying.”</p><p>“You haven’t forgiven me.”</p><p>She shook her head and dug up another spoonful, sucked the spoon into her mouth. “You aren’t normally deliberately cruel.”</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>“Not when I haven’t done something wrong.”</p><p>He would give her a point for that. He couldn’t explain it to her – he didn’t know how to. Not yet. He took the jar from her and put it aside, pulled the spoon from her mouth and kissed her. Kissed her with all the apology he could pour into it. She didn’t resist but equally she didn’t truly respond, didn’t <em>take</em> the way she would normally do.</p><p>When he drew back, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Tell me. Would you rather I was there or not? It’s your moment; I truly don’t want to spoil it.”</p><p>“I want you there,” she replied honestly.</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>*</p><p>Bran had read the synopsis and had, with an expression of deep disinterest, watched one or two YouTube videos of Sean Lopez giving his ‘dance classes’ on his own. He knew what to expect.</p><p>It began with a clearly scripted monologue by Sean, whose voice held traces of a surely faked Latin accent, talking about his excitement of meeting with Miss Carmichael, about how when he had seen the leaked footage from the charity ball he had known her to be a dancer with as vociferous a spirit as he.</p><p><em>Vociferous</em>, Tag mouthed, glancing at Bran.</p><p>Bran shrugged.</p><p>The next was an ‘interview’ with Leah. She was perched on a director’s chair in a studio, with a ballet barre and an expanse of mirrors behind her. She wore a long dress in a blue print and a diamond necklace he had given her nearly a dozen years before with a pair of matching earrings. The wolf was pleased with this, in the simple way males were when their women wore their expensive gifts.</p><p>It was odd to see Leah on screen, being her and not her at the same time. He could tell she was tense, that she was controlling her tendency to use her hands. The words that were coming out of her mouth were… not Leah in the slightest. The rhythm, the choice of language, the tone – it was as if she had suddenly sprouted a sister and it was she on screen, not his mate.</p><p>“Oh, yes, I have danced a little. A few classes here and there,” she said, massively understating the matter. The real Leah, the one sitting by his side in the cropped top he so liked and a pair of jeans, hit him on the thigh when he snorted. </p><p>On camera, his mate’s eyes looked enormous, like prey caught in the spotlight. Did she do it on purpose? Was it a make-up trick? He glanced at her, to check. Maybe they just looked like that always, he thought.</p><p>“Terribly nervous actually,” Screen Leah said in response to the next question, with a trilling laugh that was in no way her own. “I’ve not done anything purposefully for a camera before. I hope I don’t do anything embarrassing.”</p><p>There were a few more questions – all answered by this Leah pod person – and then, the obvious one.</p><p>She frowned a little, as if confused as to why she would be asked it. “David? I think he’s away at the moment. I haven’t mentioned this to him,” she said, with perfect honesty. “I’m not sure dance is really his sort of thing.”</p><p>*</p><p>Bran could honestly say hated the ‘dance’ portion of the episode. He could acknowledge he’d had the occasion qualm about David Christiansen – even if Bran knew better, his wolf didn’t. But seeing Leah being effectively mauled by a human stranger gave both him and his wolf no pleasure.</p><p>It had been a long time since he’d been jealous, an uncomfortable emotion to reconnect with, and it was actively difficult to appear as if he was enjoying himself. And he needed to pretend, because the pack was so delighted with the episode, with Leah, with her demonstrating a previously unknown talent. Leah had a new dimension to them now. Asil had his roses, Leah had <em>dance</em>.  </p><p>To make it worse, it wasn’t good enough that they watched it once, they had to watch it <em>several</em> times.</p><p>He focused on keeping his breathing calm and even. Slowly, he tangled his fingers in the length of her hair, reminding himself that she was here, beside him. The wolf grew a little steadier, a little more reassured.</p><p>“That bit was hard, we had to do that over and over again,” Leah was saying, as <em>Sean</em> put his hands on Leah’s waist and spun her into his embrace like a lover. The music was awful, a popular song sung by a young woman that Kara and Anna recognized enough to squeal when the first notes began and both to sing along during the chorus. He was surprised at Anna; he would have thought she’d have more taste.</p><p>The dance they had chosen was a waltz, the likes of which he had never seen, and it <em>was</em> sexy, just as she had written in the WhatsApp group he hadn’t known existed. In the final performance, she had worn a costume that left little to the imagination and eye make-up that made her look sultry and sensual, all of which were looks she had previously reserved only for him.</p><p>When it was finally finished, and the pack were satisfied, Leah leaned back into the crook of his arm. “What did you think?” she said, turning to look at him, beseeching, for his approval.</p><p>There was nothing else he could do. He kissed her, to the surprised whoops and yelps of the pack around him. He kissed her until they all ran away.</p><p>*</p><p>“You hated it,” she crowed, kneeling over him in her panties and the short little top. She’d taken off her bra. When she moved, he could see the under-curves of her breasts.</p><p>He’d taken her home but they had only got as far as the couch in the living area. She’d lit the fire and they’d fooled around, as the kids would say, periodically removing items of clothing. He was down to just his pants and they were uncomfortable but he didn’t want to move her from where she was perched. The view was too good.</p><p>“I hated him,” he said, stroking the skin of her abdomen, drawing lines with his thumbs up to her top, transfixed. Hungry. “You were very good, though. Did you get to keep the outfit?”</p><p>She laughed. Jealousy was an emotion with which she was intimately familiar. She had always seen what little he demonstrated as a validation of her role in his life rather than the basic instincts of the wolf. “No. And anyway, it <em>itched</em>.”</p><p>“Shame. Was he as slimey as he looked?”</p><p>Leah shook her head, spilling hair down towards him as she nipped at his mouth. “Off camera he was perfectly straight-laced. The accent is not real.”</p><p>“I gathered,” he said, thumbs brushing the crease under her breasts.  </p><p>She cupped her hands behind his head. “I wish you’d been there,” she murmured, leaning down to kiss him.</p><p>“Me too,” he said truthfully, and started tugging her panties down.</p><p>*</p><p>Leah declined the next invitation from the PR company, on the basis that it was nearly October and she didn’t want to be away from home. From <em>him</em>, Bran translated, used to the well-meaning indulging he received in the run-up to the ceremony in October.</p><p>“If you want to do it, you can,” he told her, watching as she pulled cleaning supplies from the laundry room. He was distracted. “Don’t we have a cleaning service?”</p><p>“We do but they clean for human-standards,” Leah said, sneering. Last year’s wolves had gone on to their new packs and they were in the preparation stages for the next group, which involved clearing out their accommodation.  “I clean for werewolves.”</p><p>Bran appreciated that despite her pride Leah know how to get her hands dirty, literally, but he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of his mate cleaning the small units they reserved for the newly changed. “It’s fine,” Leah said, at his look, “I’ve been doing this for years. It means I’m one of the first scents they’re familiar with.”</p><p>Bran knew Leah liked things a certain way but this seemed above and beyond. “Can’t someone else from the pack do it?”</p><p>She cocked her head. “Who would you suggest?”</p><p>He pressed his lips together, acknowledging that this was a test. If he suggested another woman he would be accused of sexism, which was something that had been happening increasingly in the last decade. At the same time, he knew if Leah instructed one of the men to clean, there would be protests. “Someone else,” he just said, acknowledging he was losing this argument.</p><p>Leah let this slide but not without a pinched look of awareness. “Everyone else has jobs. <em>This</em> is my job. Also, I don’t have a problem doing it.” </p><p>“Fine,” he said, holding up his hands in defeat. “You’re right.”</p><p>She nodded, sharply. “Snob,” she added, for good measure.</p><p>*</p><p>There was something that had been bothering him. “What was the money for?” he asked, finally.</p><p>She was silent. He knew she was awake, knew she would have heard him, and would have understood what he was talking about.</p><p>After a long moment, during which Bran realized he wasn’t going to like the answer, she said, “I thought you were going to divorce me. That’s what what the money was for.”  </p><p>Bran rolled over to look at her. “Divorce you,” he repeated.</p><p>“Leave me. Whatever.” She stayed on her side, her back to him. “She was fourteen, fifteen. I saw—I saw how you were with her. I wanted to be prepared.”</p><p>Bran controlled his every muscle, forcing himself to stay still. He thought of denying it, pretending – as he had done every time she had remotely implied this in the past – that he had no idea who she was talking about.  </p><p>Maybe now was the time to finally do this.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Bran said, trying to explain his own muddy thinking. This was something even he couldn’t properly put into words. “But it wasn’t—I never really thought of her. Like that.” When it came down to it, Mercy had been different, that was all. After years of bowing and scraping, a resourceful and clever girl had come along and looked him in the eye and refused to obey. She had outsmarted him.</p><p>And then there had been his jealousy over Sam, his son who was no longer much younger in age to him, almost a brother. In a way, <em>Sam</em> had given him ideas, layering them over the feeling that his wolf had, that Mercy was his, just as everything in their pack was.   </p><p>He heard her swallow. Fingers of hurt pricked at him through the bond, an old, familiar sickness. </p><p>“Even if that had been the case, I would never have done anything like that,” he whispered. The wolf would never have allowed Bran to. Cheating on Leah—the very idea was a cold-water-shock to his wolf. The beast inside saw Leah as a strong and faithful mate. She needed a firm hand, he thought, but he liked that. He liked that she needed him to be better. He needed her, too. To be better.</p><p>Bran listened to her silence, plucked at the bond between them, heard the vibrations of her disquiet. He pushed himself to sitting and leaned over her. “You thought I <em>could</em> cut you off? And would leave you with nothing?” Even this, he was surprised at this. How bad had things become that Leah would think he could sever their relationship, despite the repercussions, and do so without thinking of her? She must have thought him very cruel.</p><p> Had he been? The years when Mercy had lived with them had been disruptive, he remembered. The pack had been unsettled, with most of the women siding with Leah, despite her own alienating qualities. The men had taken Mercy's side. It had - he could admit - long lasting consequences for both women. Bran had spent his time negotiating Mercy’s safety but also trying to teach her a way through werewolf ways, not entirely successfully. Leah had distanced herself from their people and apparently prepared herself to distance from him.</p><p>“I just wanted to be prepared.” She turned to look up at him. “I have nothing, Bran. I don’t have a real job, a career. I’ve lived off your money for decades. How would I survive?”</p><p>“Leah, you don’t need to worry about—“</p><p>“I’m not worrying about it,” she snapped and he realized he’d missed the switch of her argument. “She’s gone, she’s married to a man who would die for her. Even <em>you</em> can't complete with that. It’s not about her any more. I’ve come to terms with <em>that</em>. I just want to be <em>useful</em>.”</p><p>“You’re useful. You’re incredibly useful.” Even to him it sounded weak.   </p><p>Her disgust – at him, at herself - was evident on her face. She slid out of bed. “I’m going to sleep in my room.”</p><p>“Leah, we haven’t finished,” he said, his temper licking at his edges.</p><p>She snapped back at him, “Yes, we have,” and closed the door between them. Bran knew better than to breach it.  </p><p>*</p><p>“You could go to college,” Bran suggested, finding her in the garage the next day, taking down the collapsible chairs they used for guests at the full moon ceremony. She had been reasonably normal to him at breakfast, almost as if their argument had never happened. “Anna is taking classes.”</p><p>“She’s learning languages, it’s not the same thing.”</p><p>Bran shook his head at her and accepted the chair he handed to her, then the next one. He started stacking them at against one of the chest freezers they had. “Why’s it not the same thing? Never mind,” he said, not wanting to be distracted. “Why not college?”</p><p>“Lea Carmichael, the werewolf? Or as my secret identity? How long do you think that would last?” she asked, crossly.</p><p>He persevered. “Online courses.”</p><p>Leah didn’t have anything to say to that, just ignored him.</p><p>“I will support you in anything you want to do,” he said, finally, firmly. And then, for the time being, he gave up.</p><p>*</p><p>“Stop being nice to me,” she hissed at him.</p><p>Bran scowled at her. “I cannot win, can I?” he asked, holding her in place as he did up the buttons at the back of her dress, running his hands down her sides to smooth any wrinkles and to annoy her. He pulled her backwards against him and kissed her neck.</p><p>She tried to slap him off, wriggling from his arms. He let her go. “Everyone is <em>talking</em>.”</p><p>“<em>No one</em> is talking.” The pack was mostly slumped in the house, exhausted from the spontaneous change. If anyone was saying anything it was requests for snacks and who had the most energy to go into the kitchen. </p><p>She cast a look back at him from their decking, haughty and very Leah. “<em>Everyone is talking</em>.”</p><p>He shrugged. “Let them.”</p><p>He followed her into the house, watched her for the rest of the night, gave her his full attention. He was unnerving her. <em>Good</em>, he thought. She had unnerved him. She <em>was</em> unnerving him. With the exception of the night of their ‘discussion’, they had slept together every night for weeks. There was a dimension to their intimacy that had not been there before. A door had been opened and he was standing on the other side.</p><p>“You’re very intense,” she whispered, when it was dark and he was inside her and they were moving together close enough to share breath.</p><p>“Bitten off more than you can chew?” he asked, nipping her jaw, digging his fingers into her thigh.</p><p>Leah’s eyes darkened and she pulled herself tighter to him, gasped. “Definitely not.”</p><p>*</p><p>After the ceremony, it was Thanksgiving, which – though they mostly ignored the celebratory side of things – was still marked with a big meal for those who didn’t have family elsewhere, which was nearly everyone. Leah and Bran took gifts to the wildlings, packed up in little wicker baskets that she arranged prettily. It was touching, he thought. Even though some of the wildlings frightened her, she still made sure one had more pumpkin pie because he preferred it, another had cherry instead.</p><p>“Maybe you could give dance classes on the internet,” he said as they got into the truck. He had a vague, pleasant, vision of her dancing on camera. Then he realized that he was less keen on her dancing for others.</p><p>“No more suggestions,” was her pert response.</p><p>He laughed. He negotiated the winding roads, then the difficult tracks, until there was nowhere further to travel by four wheels. They got out and divided the bounty between them. They’d both worn clothes they wouldn’t care to damage, intending to return part-way on four feet.</p><p>“What’s in the back-pack?” she asked.</p><p>“A surprise.”</p><p>They visited with some of their wildlings longer than others. Some recalled the holiday and he and Leah were able to spend time with them, in the spirit of the season. Some, Bran dropped the basket off at the entrance to their lair. He wasn’t foolish enough to push it further than that, not after the disruption they had faced not so long ago.</p><p>“Are we heading home now?” Leah asked once they had no more baskets left, eyeing his backpack.</p><p>He shook his head. “No. This way.”</p><p>They hiked another few miles until they reached the destination Bran had planned. He threw down the blanket he had packed and started unpacking the other goodies he had stowed away.</p><p>She looked around, standing with her hands in her back pockets. “We’ve been here. Together,” she said, eventually.  </p><p>Literally, Bran thought. Once, not long after they had been mated, they’d built a small bivouac shelter here and sat and watched the sun set, planning where they were going to build what was now their current house. The conversation had started practical – Bran had wanted more privacy, to take his wolves back from the increasingly ‘main’ road where the small town had grown. But Leah wanted something with a nice view. They had argued over the size of the property they would build – she wanted an impressive, expensive house, whilst he just wanted something discrete. They had used a charcoal stick from the fire to spontaneously draw on a square of fabric and it had ended up somewhere in the middle. He’d laid her down by the fire and signed his agreement with his mouth, pleasured her under the stars, the noises she made ringing out across the creek telling all and sundry whose mate she was and how he could make her feel.</p><p>“You brought us here on purpose. This is… romantic,” Leah said, deeply suspicious.</p><p>“Isn’t it,” Bran said, smiling at her. He beckoned her with his finger. “Come here,” he said.</p><p>And, finally smiling back at him, she did.</p><p> </p><p>-END-</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Turned on the American spelling on Word. Miraculous.</p><p>Also - for a while - this story was entitled 'Bran's a bastard'</p></blockquote></div></div>
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